e able to
control and discipline all his other sentiments and propensities, and
prescribe to him a rule of life.'[49] That such an object is fully
capable of gathering round it feelings sufficiently strong to enforce
the most rigid rule of life, will certainly not be denied by me,
privileged as I am to count among my friends more than one whose whole
life is little else than a life of devotion to an object, 'the general
interest of the human race,' plainly incapable of affording them in
exchange that 'eternity of personal enjoyment' to which ordinary
devotees look forward as their reward, and whose virtue I honour as
approaching the sublime, on account of its independence of all the props
and stimulants which ordinary virtue finds indispensable. But the
sublimest virtue does not of itself constitute religion. For, besides
the 'creed,' 'conviction,' and 'sentiment' indicated above, there is
needed some suitable object of worship to which the soul may alternately
bow down in humble reverence, and look up in fervent love--some being to
whom its prayer, praise, and thanksgiving may be fittingly addressed.
This want, recognised--as one of the few who do not recognise it
admits--by nine out of every ten persons, was distinctly recognised by
Comte, who, however, attempted to supply it by pointing, not to God, but
to Man. His reason for this was not a conviction that there is no God.
On the contrary, he habitually disclaimed, not without acrimony,
dogmatic atheism; and once even condescended so far as to declare that
'the hypothesis of design has much greater verisimilitude than that of a
blind mechanism.' But in the 'mature state of intelligence' at which his
mind had arrived, 'conjecture founded on analogy did not seem to him a
basis to rest a theory upon.' He preferred a religious theory without a
basis, and therefore adopted one as destitute of support as the tortoise
on which stands the earth-upholding elephant of Hindoo mythology;
selecting, as the 'Grand Etre' to be worshipped, 'the entire Human Race,
conceived as a continuous whole, past, present, and future.' For this
great collective _non_-existence, this compound of that which is, that
which has been but has ceased to be, and that which is not yet, he
elaborated a minute ritual of devotional observances, and would, if he
had had the chance, have consecrated a complete sacerdotal hierarchy,
subordinated to himself as supreme pontiff. Having, for fear of
recognising wha